Supporting Mike Sosebee’s film

February 26, 2012

For details about how to support Mike Sosebee’s film, Somewhere in New Mexico Before the End of Time, click here. The film will feature my favorite subject: me. Mike Sosebee is an independent filmmaker who hopes to break even on this film. As he says, the film is a failure if it nets money in his bank account.

I want to Thank everyone for their generosity supporting this film. Thanks virgin terry for the reminder about a mailing address: Mike Sosebee, 603 Seagaze Dr. #771 Oceanside CA 92054

Years ago I was a Real Estate Broker in Las Vegas during one of the biggest booms in history. At the beginning of the collapse in 07′ I was vested in development projects that froze up when banks quit lending and were eventually foreclosed. We had to watch the boats go over the falls and we were powerless to stop it. One of my partners committed suicide.

About the same time I ran across this little book called “Out Of Gas” by David Goodstein. I then began to obsess about Peak Oil and Climate Change. I ran across all of this literature such as Limits To Growth, The Long Emergency, Jared Diamond etc…I joined Toastmasters and began giving Peak Oil Presentations. One night the Toastmaster asked me to join another group, “you’re scaring the hell out of the members”.

That inquiry eventually led me to Guy McPherson and after a year of correspondence I made the sojourn to the “Mud Hut” and the production of this film. What a glorious time to be alive.

Sounds like an interesting documentary along the lines of several recent ones. The more documentaries like this that are produced, the more people are hit with the problem confronting civilisation and the natural world.

Another interesting couple of vids on this forum page. One presents Dr. Joseph Zawodny of NASA on new LENR discoveries, and the other a vid describing the extremely interesting characteristics of a relatively cheap metal alloy of Nickel and Tatanium, called nitinol – one is left wondering why this technology has not been more readily studied.

Scientist: With climate change fires will become more frequent, more intense and harder to stop.
– Common Dreams staff

“We are going to see more fire in (the) future, that’s the bottom line.” “A warmer world’s going to see more fire.”

This eery warning comes from Mike Flannigan, a senior research scientist with Natural Resources Canada and professor at the University of Alberta, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He says that fires will become more frequent, more intense and harder to stop. [ John McColgan of the Alaskan Type I Incident Management Team (Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Fire Service)] photo: John McColgan of the Alaskan Type I Incident Management Team (Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Fire Service)

Flannigan’s “conservative estimate” states there would be two to three times more fire activity in the northern hemisphere by the end of the century.

“If a fire is intense, aerial suppression is no longer effective, so even modern fire management agencies, like Canada, the United States and Australia — among the best in the world — will be extremely challenged,” he said.

“I would argue that the standard way of doing fire management will no longer be effective in the future. And that doesn’t even begin to address many parts of the globe where they have traditional fire-suppression approaches, which will be completely overwhelmed.”

“So the risk to life and infrastructure is only going to increase under climate change.”

If more wildfires were not bad enough, Flannigan said the warming climate means peat lands, which contain vast stores of carbon, are also more likely to ignite and release greenhouse gas emissions. The emissions could in turn “feed” more warming and more fire.

A 1997 fire in Indonesia ignited peat lands that smouldered for months. By the time it was over, Flannigan said the peat fire had released greenhouse gases equal to 20 to 40 per cent of the total worldwide emissions that year from fossil fuels.

Peat fires in the boreal could have the potential to release far more greenhouse gases. “Our peat reserves in Canada, Russia and Alaska dwarf anything in Indonesia,” he said in an interview.

Inter Press Service reports that one researcher referred to the northern forest as a “carbon bomb” “waiting to be ignited:”

When the increased fire from global warming was first detected in 2006, Johann Goldammer of the Global Fire Monitoring Center at Germany’s Freiburg University called the northern forest a “carbon bomb”.

“It’s sitting there waiting to be ignited, and there is already ignition going on,” Goldammer said according to media reports in 2006.

Inter Press Service continues:

About half the world’s soil carbon is locked in northern permafrost and peatland soils, said Merritt Turetsky, an ecologist at Canada’s University of Guelph. This carbon has been accumulating for thousands of years, but fires can release much of this into the atmosphere rapidly, Turetsky said in a release.

Over the past 10 years, fires are burning far more boreal forest than ever before. Longer snow-free seasons, melting permafrost and rising temperatures are large-scale changes underway in the north, Turetsky and colleagues have found.

Other researchers have shown that the average size of forest fires in the boreal zone of western Canada has tripled since the 1980s. Much of Canada’s vast forest region is approaching a tipping point, warned researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Germany’s largest research organisation.

This “drastic change” in normal fire pattern has occurred with a only a small increase in temperatures relative to future temperatures, the German researchers concluded in a study published in the December 2011 issue of The American Naturalist.

Interesting article in The Telegraph (U.K.). Not so much it’s content as much as the forum for such a clear message of peak oil. Too bad he doesn’t take the next step and realize that, ultimately, peak oil is actually a good thing for the planet. . . .

Conventionally-produced crude will remain absolutely critical, and demand for it will spiral, until mankind bans the internal combustion engine, outlaws ammonium-based fertilisers, dismantles the global pharmaceutical industry and learns to live without plastic. I can’t see that happening anytime soon.

Victor, the fires are scary – if they are bad already and a certain amount of increase temperature is in the works even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels today, well perhaps the end of industrial civilization is coming too late to save most of the planetary species including ourselves.

I continue to read Mirrors – Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano – a bit each day. He has quite a way of pointing out our failings as humans by revealing bits of history that didn’t make it into our history books. We are not a species to be admired, despite occasional acts of self sacrifice and nobility. On the whole we fail rather badly. I think more and more that it is best if our species go extinct……

To my knowledge virtually none of the legislation of recent years that effectively destroy the Bill of Rights has even been challenged in the courts. People nowadays seem to think that if Congress passes a law, that makes it legal, so why fight it? It is because the Constitution is supposed to protect you from just such laws! If these laws are not fought, then the ‘freedom’ game is over in America, and everywhere else that up to now has recognised human rights.

As I have indicated on many occasions, the road to Collapse will lead first to oppression and authoritarianism.

Occupy Wall Street hopefully sets up the class struggle necessary to remove this blight, but I am not optimistic. The pieces are being put into place by TPTB to brutally suppress all freedom in the near future.

Of course, once the clampdown comes, it will probably be accompanied by or shortly followed by public exercises similar in tone to meant to release the people’s pent-up rage on a regular basis by allowing (forcing) them to vent their anger at the terrorists that were responsible for the ills of the world and the subsequent removal of their freedoms in the effort to restore freedom to the world – periodic two-minute hate sessions, as 1984 would have it.

Most Americans have never even heard of the Ogallala Aquifer, but the truth is that it is one of the most important bodies of water on the globe. It covers well over 100,000 square miles and it sits underneath the states of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and South Dakota.

Water drawn from the Ogallala Aquifer is used to water more than 15 million acres of crops. Without this source of water, the United States would not be the breadbasket of the world.

That is why what is happening right now is so alarming.

The following are 20 signs that dust bowl conditions will soon return to the heartland of America….

#1 The Ogallala Aquifer is being drained at a rate of approximately 800 gallons per minute.

#2 According to the U.S. Geological Survey, since 1940 “a volume equivalent to two-thirds of the water in Lake Erie” has been permanently lost from the Ogallala Aquifer.

#3 Decades ago, the Ogallala Aquifer had an average depth of approximately 240 feet, but today the average depth is just 80 feet. In some areas of Texas, the water is gone completely.

#4 Scientists are warning that nothing can be done to stop the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. The ominous words of David Brauer of the Ogallala Research Service should alarm us all….

“Our goal now is to engineer a soft landing. That’s all we can do.”

#5 According to a recent National Geographic article, the average depletion rate of the Ogallala Aquifer is picking up speed….

Even more worrisome, the draining of the High Plains water account has picked up speed. The average annual depletion rate between 2000 and 2007 was more than twice that during the previous fifty years. The depletion is most severe in the southern portion of the aquifer, especially in Texas, where the water table beneath sizeable areas has dropped 100-150 feet; in smaller pockets, it has dropped more than 150 feet.

#6 According to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. interior west is now the driest that it has been in 500 years.

#7 It seems like the middle part of the United States experiences a major drought almost every single year now. Last year, “the drought of 2011” virtually brought Texas agriculture to a standstill. More than 80 percent of the state of Texas experienced “exceptional drought” conditions at some point, and it was estimated that about 30 percent of the wheat fields in Texas were lost. Agricultural losses from the drought were estimated to be $3 billion in the state of Texas alone.

#8 Wildfires have burned millions of acres of vegetation in the central part of the United States in recent years. For example, wildfires burned an astounding 3.6 million acres in the state of Texas alone during 2011. This helps set the stage for huge dust storms in the future.

#9 Texas is not the only state that has been experiencing extremely dry conditions. Oklahoma only got about 30 percent of the rainfall that it normally gets last summer.

#10 In some areas of the southwest United States we are already seeing huge dust storms come rolling through major cities. You can view video of a giant dust storm rolling through Phoenix, Arizona right here.

#11 Unfortunately, scientists tell us that it would be normal for dust bowl conditions to persist in parts of North America for decades. The following is from an article in the Vancouver Sun….

But University of Regina paleoclimatologist Jeannine-Marie St. Jacques says that decade-long drought is nowhere near as bad as it can get.

St. Jacques and her colleagues have been studying tree ring data and, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Vancouver over the weekend, she explained the reality of droughts.

“What we’re seeing in the climate records is these megadroughts, and they don’t last a decade—they last 20 years, 30 years, maybe 60 years, and they’ll be semi-continental in expanse,” she told the Regina Leader-Post by phone from Vancouver.

“So it’s like what we saw in the Dirty Thirties, but imagine the Dirty Thirties going on for 30 years. That’s what scares those of us who are in the community studying this data pool.”

#12 Experts tell us that U.S. water bills are likely to soar in the coming years. It is being projected that repairing and expanding our decaying drinking water infrastructure will cost more than one trillion dollars over the next 25 years, and as a result our water bills will likely approximately triple over that time period.

#13 Right now, the United States uses approximately 148 trillion gallons of fresh water a year, and there is no way that is sustainable in the long run.

#14 According to a U.S. government report, 36 states are already facing water shortages or will be facing water shortages within the next few years.

#15 Lake Mead supplies about 85 percent of the water to Las Vegas, and since 1998 the level of water in Lake Mead has dropped by about 5.6 trillion gallons.

#16 A federal judge has ruled that the state of Georgia has very few legal rights to Lake Lanier, and since Lake Lanier is the main water source for the city of Atlanta that presents quite a problem.

#17 It has been estimated that the state of California only has a 20 year supply of fresh water left.

#18 It has been estimated that the state of New Mexico only has a 10 year supply of fresh water left.

#19 Approximately 40 percent of all rivers in the United States and approximately 46 percent of all lakes in the United States have become so polluted that they are are no longer fit for human use.

#20 Eight states in the Great Lakes region have signed a pact banning the export of water from the Great Lakes to outsiders – even to other U.S. states.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti signaled the worst may be over for the euro region’s most distressed bonds and said he expects leaders to strike a deal on a firewall for the bloc over the next month.
“I don’t think it is likely” that spreads will widen again, Monti, 68, said in an interview today at the prime minister’s 16th-century residence in central Rome. “The unpredictability of spreads is not negligible. But we see now in the case of Italy a steady, although gradual decline in the last several weeks. I don’t see honestly any reasons why this course should change.”

I’ve said many times that when the water stops flowing, people start dying – in droves.

As someone who lives on the edge of the area mentioned in the article, it reinforces the urgency to get my water reservoirs in place and fully charged. It may not be enough, but it will be better than nothing.

My father lives in Tyler, in north-eastern Texas. He and my stepmother moved there about eight years ago. He’s an avid fisherman, and part of the draw of the area for them was the large number of manmade lakes within close proximity to the city. He’s sent me pictures of them over the past couple of years — Lake Fork, Lake Tyler, Lake Palestine — all showing dramatically reduced water levels.

My father and I have developed a regular routine in our conversation regarding the rain there in Tyler and his lawn. His house falls within the jurisdiction of one of those ridiculous “neighborhood associations” which stipulate how your yard and the house exterior must be maintained to adhere to everyone else’s standards. Of course this means a well-manicured lawn. So during the periods of drought they’ve been going through regularly of late, they’ve spent a lot of money on water to keep the grass green. Of course, the moisture encourages “weed” growth as well, so he also must spend money on herbicides. All the greenery is a boon to moles, which gnaw the grass roots and kill the grass, as well as making “unsightly” raised areas above their tunneling, so he has spent a not inconsiderable sum battling them as well. All that is in addition to the time and money spent cutting the grass, another not inconsiderable sum, since his large lot is over an acre in size.

Thing is, as a 65-year old American male, a well-manicured lawn represents something to him. He takes as much pride in it, I imagine, as a farmer would of prize-winning livestock, or of a good crop yield. What drought means for my dad, though, is more work to maintain his place in (what he cannot see is) a now defunct social paradigm. For the farmer, it means a loss of livelihood, or even starvation. My dad cannot see the absurdity of the almost surreal cycle he’s caught up in, even as the cost of gas to put in his John Deere riding mower continues to go up, taking the cost of everything else along with it.

I imagine a lot of people are currently doing without some things, simply to keep a green carpet of invasive, alien turf going around their homes. The staying power of old illusions astonishes me.

I’m at home today (and yesterday), suffering from the flu. I had a flu shot earlier in the season, but apparently, the strain I’ve contracted was not included in the vaccine.

I haven’t been this sick in at least 30 years, probably longer. This experience is a grim reminder of the tenuous thread we all maintain with respect to illness and treatment. The industrial economy has allowed untold numbers of people to overcome illnesses that would have otherwise killed them.

It won’t be long before that reality is back at work. The flu (just one example) has killed many, many people over the years and we haven’t had a serious pandemic in quite a while. Based on the way I feel today, I really feel sorry for those who succumb in such a way. Not a fun way to go (is there a fun way?).

When are you going to learn that modern flu shots do not have a good record, and in fact in some cases might be harmful to you?

Perhaps you should start gaining expertise in alternative medicines. I haven’t had flu shots in many years, primarily, I believe, because I keep myself on a well-balanced diet, and supplement it with Vitamins C & especially D.

Victor, you may be right about the flu vaccine. However, my experience with it (until this week) has been quite good. The last time I had the flu was in 1977 – 35 years ago. For many of those years I didn’t get the flu shot and so perhaps in the years that I did take it, I wouldn’t have contracted the flu anyway. Who knows?

Each year the flu vaccine is comprised of the top 3 or 4 viral strains that circulated the year before. There are many, many strains of flu and all of them can’t be included, otherwise the shot would be as big as your arm.

Of course, one can argue that no artificial preventatives should ever be implemented as it is contrary to the natural way of things. There is some merit in that argument, I’ll admit – until I’m the one on the receiving end of things. Then my attitude changes somewhat and I want whatever it takes to keep me from being miserable. Call it a function of being on the tail end of the baby boom, or maybe it’s because I’m human and don’t like pain and suffering. 🙂

There is also a very real economic incentive for me to do whatever I can to stay healthy. As the only provider in my clinic, when I’m not there to generate income, not only do I lose the income, but I also have to keep paying my six employees as well as all the other bills. Yes, I know that goes to the very root of the problems of the industrial economy, but for now, I’m stuck with it.

A new paper in Science examines the geologic record for context relating to ocean acidification, a lowering of the pH driven by the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The research group (twenty-one scientists from nearly as many different universities) reviewed the evidence from past known or suspected intervals of ocean acidification. The work provides perspective on the current trend as well as the potential consequences. They find that the current rate of ocean acidification puts us on a track that, if continued, would likely be unprecedented in last 300 million years.http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/03/ocean-acidification-could-become-worst-in-at-least-300-million-years.ars?clicked=related_right

TRDH – sorry you are not well and I hope for you and your patients that you recover soon.

BTW H5N1 is not gone – it is still infecting poultry and people – if anyone wants to keep up with this http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/ is a good source. Besides H5N1 Crofs blog has news of other infectious diseases that may be mostly in other countries but may be headed this way – such as dengue fever.

Robni Datta, re: “How to destroy American family farms” . . . the corruption is so widespread that resistance appears to be nothing but an exercise in futility. The only thing to save us now is complete collapse.

‘The flu (just one example) has killed many, many people over the years and we haven’t had a serious pandemic in quite a while. Based on the way I feel today, I really feel sorry for those who succumb in such a way. Not a fun way to go (is there a fun way?)’ -tsdh

this also reminds me of a most touching description of carl sagan’s death by his wife in the book ‘billions and billions’. when it comes to dying, the presence of a trusted, supportive loved one, drugs to alieve pain, and perhaps, like in the case of aldous huxley, an entheogen like lsd, provide the best death possible.

btw, now i’m interested in checking out the work huxley felt was his best, titled ‘island’. encapsulates his utopian ideas, which apparently were anti-civilization. comments from anyone familiar with it?

Got myself a list of Huxley’s writings recently. Was searching for doors of perception and found the book when visiting some of the dearest people to us.
So Huxley did consider “Island” his best book? I dearly love this book. Read it many, many years ago for the first time. Have been searching for island since 😉 Scenes of home/ paradise. Wisdom to manage/avoid the predicament of human existence – which doesn’t prevail.
Anti-civilization – I’d consider the world described as the next step in evolution of man, identifying the missing link between apes and humans as – us.

high today in AL predicted to be 81 degrees – 16 degrees above normal
Blueberries are opening their flowers. This is definitely unusual. If we get hit with a late heavy frost no telling what damage it will do this year. Average last frost is March 25 to 30th, but who knows this year.

In the face of death, now or later, because of old age or starvation,
the fact of certain extinction, one must have a spiritual basis and
philosophy for continuing.
If one doesn’t have such a paradigm, one is living a transparent and meaningless existence amongst a bunch of other similar individuals.
The experience of individuality far overwhelming any feeling of togetherness.

Petrol prices in the UK have hit £1.374 per litre now and are expected to keep rising….for you Yanks, that’s approx $8.30 per US Gallon….think you have it bad – you are only worrying about $5 gas….. 🙂

This is only the beginning. There’ll not likely be many more periods where the prices rise and then fall again by any substantial amount as demand is destroyed. Most producers in the world have already hit declining production rates, the now oil is very expensive to extract and refine, and demand continues its rapid rise in the Far East and Middle East.

Brad Smith: I looked at the website linked with your name. It’s not really my place to criticize one’s belief structure, but since in your post you indicate that one “must have a spiritual basis and philosophy for continuing” I figured I would add my two cents.

The website is quite a collection of conspiracy theories, and (unless I misunderstand its intent) critical of traditional Judeo-Chrisitian beliefs.

That’s okay, of course, but it seems to me that you’ve traded one set of fanciful magical thinking ideas for another set. Neither of which is a requirement for a happy, fulfilling life.

I don’t really see a good end to this early mild weather. As you say, everything will blossom nicely and then get hit with at least one late frost. We have the same problem over here in the south of England. And on top of that, we are under drought conditions this year – which means the high possibility of water restrictions being imposed – there goes me garden this year! We have, I believe, in our area received only about 15% of the normal rainfall thus far this year. Back in ’76 they had to truck in water to people, it got so bad.

Victor, I’ve never paid even $4 for a gallon of gas. Got really close once, but just once. The rest of the country was paying $4+ but here in our neck of the woods, it never quite reached that price.

The U.S. economy can’t handle prices that high since the very fabric of our society is based on the automobile. Things are a little different now due to quantitative easing, and we may be able to tolerate $5 gas. But, I’m skeptical.

While the U.S. is definitely losing its place as the end all/do all on the world stage, our economy is still the largest. If prices rise sufficiently to bring the U.S. down, the world will follow.

Kathy, its been an amazingly mild winter here in NY state. Only 3 nights below 15 degrees for the entire winter. Virtually no snow at all. Comfrey is already up as are the chives. That is 2 weeks earlier than normal. A really warm stretch next week will shut down our little maple syrup operation.
Here are 3 things that worked really really well for us this winter:

1. We didn’t get our proper root cellar in, and we don’t have a basement. We put metal garbage cans in our barns filled with straw and root crops, and the piled bales of hay around them. The produce coming out of there is as fresh as the day they were dug.

2. We grew our own field corn this past year dried it and have been eating it all winter. Beyond the normal pones, bread, and polenta we have also enjoyed roasted corn tea, and Navajo dried corn soup. Funny thing is we look at the tea as a poor man’s substitute, while it all the rage in trendy Ithaca restaurants.

3. Dried Costata Romanesco was a wonderful surprise. Rehydrates into a yummy squash. Easy to store.

4. The black walnuts and hickory nuts came out well. Not as much meat as we would like, but the chestnuts and walnuts are still a couple of years away.

All the best. I don’t post much anymore, because I don’t have much to say, but I read it all. Thanks to you all.